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My Must-Have Windows Software

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Christine

I'm a geek with a love for all things tech. I'm also an online business consultant with expertise in SEO, SMM, and digital marketing strategies.

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11 Comments

  1. 1

    Keet Edwards

    Great list and a couple alternatives I hadn’t thought of.

    My only suggestion is to add Glary Utilities to this list to keep the extra garbage off the machine and keep things humming along. There are free and pro versions, I’ve been using the free version and can’t say I miss anything only included in the pro.

    Added to my Reader!

  2. 2

    me.yahoo.com-a-TpfGTlo91YiXU_jhd0ArowY.tIgSl.12-a577d

    Are there any particular advantages of EditPlus over something like Notepad++ or just used to it?

  3. 3

    rodaniel

    I’m a big fan of CCleaner. It’s one of the very first things I slap on a Windows PC to scour for orphaned Registry entries and junk files. I’ve used it on dozens (maybe hundreds) of PCs without issue.

    I also swear by Mp3tag for cleaning up and managing my MP3 file tag metadata.

  4. 4

    earth2marsh.com/

    I moved from CutePDF to PDFCreator–it’s open source for one reason… And what about AutoHotkey?

    Otherwise, I’m right with you. I probably learned about some of these from you too, so thanks. And congrats on the new blog too.

  5. 5

    theo

    Hi Gina

    Yay! You’re back bigger and stronger!

    The first link in this article has a double http.

    http://http//lifehacker.com/software/windows/geek-to-live-how-to-format-your-hard-drive-and-install-windows-xp-from-scratch-157578.php

    Theo

  6. 6

    Gina Trapani

    Thanks for the catch (and the compliment), Theo! Link fixed.

  7. 7

    Ted Avery

    Hey Gina, so glad to see your content again, I’ve missed it from Lifehacker! I must say, I like your articles more now that you have the freedom to write entirely about what works best for you, I feel like the tips are all the more helpful.

    May I suggest putting a link on ginatrapani.org? I had been checking there periodically trying to see where you would be after Lifehacker and had no idea you were writing here till Lifehacker linked.

    Finally, awesome list, but I really think you should give Windows Live Photo Gallery a try instead of Picasa. You’re probably hesitant as I was as Google is usually a safe choice over Microsoft in every other aspect, but it really does offer a lot more control in making tweaks along with the “I’m Feeling Lucky” type options Picasa offers.

  8. 8

    marybethcarroll

    Thought for sure I’d see Dropbox on this list…

    Thrilled to see you back to blogging, hopefully recharged and inspired. I admire your courage stepping away from something as successful as Lifehacker.

  10. 10

    Rafael Perrone

    You mentioned you POP your gmail to Thunderbird once a month. Now that we have offline gmail, do you still do that, or have you switched completely to offline gmail?

  11. 11

    Jeff-Flowers

    Hello Ms Gina; nice to see that you are keeping busy. Here is the software I like to use when I run Vista:

    -Portable Firefox with Flashblock*
    -Notepad2*
    -Foxit Reader*
    -Foobar2000 in Portable Mode*
    -VLC*
    -Putty*
    -Mame*
    -Exact Audio Copy
    -Lame*
    -Flac*
    -Paint.Net
    -uTorrent*

    *Portable software or software that can be extracted and run from my home directory (C:\Users\jeff\Apps). I run as a regular, unprivledged user in Windows for security reasons. I developed my love for portable|installerless software when I was a Mac OS X user and kept it when I moved to Vista.

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